Project: The 99%, an exhibit of photographs from the Occupy Wall Street movement by artist Brendon Stuart, is on display at College of the Atlantic's Ethel H. Blum GalleryProject: The 99%, an exhibit of photographs from the Occupy Wall Street movement by artist Brendon Stuart, is on display at College of the Atlantic's Ethel H. Blum Gallery Credit: Brendon Stuart 2011Spawned from the growing awareness and anger regarding the misuse of governmental power by big banks and multinational corporations rooted in the 2007-2008 financial crisis, activists took to the streets of Manhattan’s financial district on September 17, 2011 to protest, eventually ending up in Zuccotti Park. This was the birthplace of what became the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street.

The initial protest received global attention, morphing into a larger socio-political movement spawning similar protests in over 951 cities in 82 countries in less than a month. Project: The 99% is Stuart’s documentation of events in Lower Manhattan from October 2011 through September 2012, showing what existed as Occupy Wall Street.

Image from Project: The 99%Image from Project: The 99% Credit: Brendon StuartThe show is up from Monday, April 10 through Saturday, April 15, with an opening reception on Tuesday, April 11 at 6:30 p.m.

Stuart is a documentary/fine art photographer and visual artist. Born in San Francisco in 1976, he moved around Northern California originally developing interests in illustration and music before discovering photography. Some of his major photographic interests include transition, the relationship between fact and fiction, and the idea of the “American Dream.” In 2008 he graduated from the full time certificate program at the International Center of Photography in New York for Photojournalism and Documentary photography. Some of his photographic heroes and inspirations include Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Lillian Bassman, and Trevor Paglen to name just a few.

In his explorations of photographic subjects after ICP, he set out to travel around the United States to explore the cities, stations, landscapes and people through traveling on America’s Greyhound bus lines. Shortly after the Occupy Wall Street protests began, he photographed the movement’s goings on in lower Manhattan. In 2012 after years of exploring his home country, he took his first trip out of the States and travelled to Peru, photographing as he explored, and has since travelled to numerous other countries with a camera in hand. Today he is based in Brooklyn, NY and continues to work on assorted photo, video and music projects.

Image from Project: The 99%Image from Project: The 99% Credit: Brendon StuartBlum Gallery Hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Admission is free of charge.

College of the Atlantic is the first college in the U.S. to focus on the relationship between humans and the environment. In 2016, both The Princeton Review and the Sierra Club named College of the Atlantic the #1 Green College in the United States. The intentionally small school of 350 students and 35 faculty members offers a Bachelor of Arts degree in human ecology – the study of how humans interact with our natural, social and technological environments. Each student develops their own course of study in human ecology, collaborating and innovating across multiple disciplines.